Guiding Principles

For those who have practiced digital marketing for more than a decade or two, certain practices tend to remain evergreen while some details change. For example, for SEO, we teach that the relevance and accessibility of our content tends to win over the latest tips and tricks to influence search engines. There are similar guidelines for email marketing.

So the first guiding principles may not be on your OMCP exam, although they can certainly help candidates guess at some questions. These will likely remain applicable—even as our technology changes over the next decade.

Do modify and make them your own, memorize them, and put them on the wall. Your campaigns will be better for it.

Every Email Is a Wanted Email

• Our recipients must be delighted to receive every message we send.
• Our messages must help recipients or build trust whether they chose to do business with us or not.
• Every email represents a chance to earn an unsubscribe, so we will deliver what our subscribers hope for, consistently.

We Are Lawful and Responsible

• Our email marketing practices will comply with all relevant regulations and laws.
• We will always require consent before adding an address to our list and make it easy to leave our lists.

We Earn Our High Deliverability

• We are committed to great content, reputation, and proper implementation of technology to maintain deliverability.
• We will keep only engaged recipients on our list.
• We will only use highly reputable transaction email services.

The first principle (every email is a wanted email) can be very difficult. But all too often we marketers get so excited about conveying our product features, or we are under pressure to send something—anything—to get the newsletter out, that we fill it with self‐beneficial, minimally personalized messages that don’t delight the recipient. Like most things, it takes time and investment to create and manage good email campaigns.

One of my favorite emails to receive in 2003–2004 was from Cathay Pacific Airlines. I could count on it to share surprisingly low airfares for travel to and within Asia. I’d browse every email, imagining the travel I could experience for a fraction of typical airfare. It was my chance to dream and to consider. I made sure I received their emails and read each one for several years. Every email was delightful and they never mis‐stepped.

Staying up with the laws and regulations related to email marketing is essential to protecting your organization, but also to treating your recipients with respect and earning their trust. This chapter gets you started with ensuring compliance. All of these things contribute to deliverability—the ability to ensure your campaigns get delivered and read.

You may not achieve customer delight in every message, but to the degree that you do, your recipients will anticipate and mark your emails as welcomed or high priority and remain open to do more business with your company. And this is good marketing, no matter what changes behind the scenes.